


South Memorial Blues (working title)

by lurfaws



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Modern AU, Yakuza AU, hospital au, sometime in the future the shippy stuff will start because they can't start off liking each other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-04-10 22:52:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4410977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurfaws/pseuds/lurfaws
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katara is doing her residency in the South Memorial ER and Zuko has had a nasty run-in with someone who really likes stabbing people. Ozai is a crime lord and guess which of his children actually enjoys the work?! Slooooow burn Zutara.</p>
<p>This is a Hospital AU so there WILL be some references to medical things. I try to write around it since I'm not actually very knowledgeable about it all, but know that this will be a recurring setting. </p>
<p>I have only JUST started working on this for Zutara week. Please bear with me as I edit and write and plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, thanks for your interest.  
> Second, enjoy what there is for now. I promise I'm going to keep working on it.  
> Third, let me know if/what you liked it because that makes a writer feel good. ^^

’ _This is the last patient, then I’m gone_ ,’ she promised herself for the fifth time that night. Her residency shift was technically over an hour and a half ago, but the staff at South Memorial were thin on the ground and Katara couldn’t just _leave_ when they had more people coming through the doors.

It was just her luck that the next one they rolled in still had the knife he had been stabbed with.

A trauma’s worth of precisely controlled frenzy- the likes of which rarely seen outside of medical professionals and preschool teachers- brought him to stable condition and Katara to exhaustion. They had done everything they could for everything they could find. Katara had checked twice.

All she had left to do was wait for the man to come around. Not necessarily a requirement, but she was too tired to want to think about getting home and it’d be easier just to have the nurse wake her instead of bringing anyone else up to speed.

There was also a small part of her that didn’t want to leave him. The emergency contacts on file weren’t answering their phones and hadn’t called despite her or the nurses’ messages, so she had started to worry there wasn’t anyone coming. He already looked like he had been through enough, she didn’t want him to feel like no one cared.

Katara remembered to fire off a text to her brother before pouring herself into the visitor’s chair at the end of the patient’s bed and leaning onto the mattress to rest her eyes.

–

“You know him, Katara?”

“Hm?” She blinked slowly at the RN, having only gotten a few minutes of a nap. “No, not really. Just didn’t want him to be alone when he woke up. I don’t mind, seeing as I’m in no fit state to ride the bus.”

The nurse nodded, understanding better than most Katara’s desire to see every patient celebrated for being alive. “Shame about his face though. He must not have gotten that treated properly when it happened.”

“No way to know yet. We don’t have any of his information on file.” There hadn’t been much on the records they brought her either.

“Ask when he wakes up, will you?” the nurse asked and replaced his chart, “We’ll need to know if it’s going to affect anything.”

“Mhm.”

–

It wasn’t very long after Katara’s mind finally began to drift that she felt the man shift his weight and her eyes snapped open. His voice sounded hoarse, like he had been shouting or inhaling smoke, “What happened?”

“Funny, I was about to ask you that.” She leaned back into her chair and straightened her spine, before reaching for his wrist.

His scowl was impressive, made more so by the scar across half his face, but Katara refused to be rattled in her own hospital. Even if he did wrench his hand away. “What are you doing?”

“I was checking your pulse,” she answered curtly, not in the mood to be challenged. This one had challenge written all over him. “Are you experiencing any pain?”

“I’m not thrilled about the gown.” He looked at her like she had been personally responsible for picking out the sterile pattern. Like she had some vendetta against his pride. “Or about people grabbing me. Who exactly are you?”

“ _I’m_ the one who put you back together.” Her annoyance was cold, tired. She’d passed the point of knowing exactly when she’d slept last and here was this _patient_ getting short with _her_. She was off the clock. She was _trying_ to be helpful.

“Well I didn’t ask you to.”

Katara stood and swayed for only a moment when the blood rushed to her head, “No, I suppose you couldn’t have since you had passed out.” She checked the quietly beeping machines instead to make sure nothing had changed, made a quick note on his chart, and slammed it back in place. “You’ll live, no thanks to whoever stabbed you. I’ll send a nurse in with food. Call someone and get some rest.”

Incensed by his response to saving his life, Katara all but stomped to the desk, grumbled out a “he’s all yours”, and yanked her phone open to call Sokka for a ride home. Where did he get off being all offended that someone had cared enough to make sure he was okay? Who did he think he was to turn away from kindness? It _couldn’t_ be the sleep-deprivation speaking. ’ _Zuko. What a prick._ ’


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko leaves the hospital and broods because why not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A writing exercise for the zutara week prompt "rue". Just trying to get into Zuko's head a little.   
> (I totally will come back to edit this wow I shouldn't even post it yet but okay.)

He got out of the hospital as soon as he could manage his own feet. It wasn't as quickly as he wanted, but there was less to complain about once the grabby resident left.   
  
Zuko frowned at the paperwork, signing away his right to sue the hospital if he got worse. It was unnecessary. He knew Azula never did real damage unless she meant to. He'd seen her handiwork before.   
  
Something he said must have set her off, but hell if he'd ever know what it was. She could hold onto her bitterness for months before doing anything about it if she wanted.   
  
Their mother always used to say that Azula was a singular person. Someone who didn't see the world the same way that most did. Zuko used to wonder what that meant. It was sometime after the accident that he started to realize how right his mother was. She usually was right. He could use someone who was unerringly right like that.   
  
A car pulled up and a door was opened for him. No worrying about messing up dressing flagging down a cab for even the disappointing child of Ozai. Zuko sat stiffly in the seat and breathed deeply through his nose to ignore the pain. He could still feel his shirt stretch across the bandage and he couldn't get the idea of his mom out of his head.   
  
He hadn't felt comfortable in a car since the accident. He wasn't even in the car at the time. _'Neither was my mother, if anyone bothered to listen.'_


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So many more things are happening than I initially imagined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my goodness, I'm sorry for the incredible delay. My computer died for a very long time and then the holidays kicked my ass. Here's another bit of freewrite. I'm intending to get this going again and I'm probably going to keep doing brief character interactions to get a handle on how they're the same or different in my au.   
> Thanks for bearing with me, and thanks for reading!

"You know, I almost had an extra steak on my hands last night because of you." 

"Yeah right, Sokka. With you there's no such thing as an extra steak." Katara smiled as she dug through the fridge for something to eat, taking note of the fact that there was not an extra steak to be found, cooked or otherwise. She had expected as much, given his distinctly carniverous appetite. After tossing out a container bad lo mein, Katara decided to settle on cold pizza. 

Her brother pulled a face at her when she turned around chewing her find, "Katara, I am aware that you don't have time to microwave things at work, but we eat our leftovers like civilized people in this household. _Warm._ " 

She waved off his exaggerated horror and dropped into the empty seat opposite Sokka at their table. "Let's get back to what's really important here," she said, leveling a look at him that she used when she wanted a straight answer, "What happened to your face?"

The humor drained out of his face, making the bruise on his face more apparent. Someone else might not think anything of it, but his sister wasn't going to miss something like that. He knew she hadn't dropped it completely when he avoided the question on the ride home, but he was less sure that it was his silence on the matter than the fact that you can't really have a conversation on a motorcycle. 

"It's nothing," he finally said, "There was a guy itching to start something where I went to meet the boys and he said I looked at him funny."

"Did you?"

"Does imitating grumpy cat count as looking at someone funny?" Sokka illustrated, drawing the corners of his mouth as far down as he could, but cracked into a grin after only a couple seconds. 

It wasn't fair that he played the grumpy cat card, since he knew Katara was fully on board with the internet's collective obsession with cats, but under the intended levity there was a part of her that was still worried he had actually done it. "You need to be more careful. I know you have a live-in med student so it won't get around at the hospital, but Dad's not going to like you attracting attention like that."

"Who's to say it wasn't part of my grand strategy?"

"Smart as you are, I'd hope you would have a better strategy than fist-fights started by internet memes."


End file.
